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While Google anticipated a shift from R&D to expansion, it was surely committed to increasing the wrong technology. In the early 2010s, solar racing seemed to be in close competition photovoltaic solar (PV) and utility-scale concentrated solar energy (CSP), which uses solar-heated fluids to drive electric turbines. Google has invested more than billions of dollars in many renewable energy companies and public services, including major investments in BrightSource Energy and eSolar CSP. A decade later, these opportunities don’t seem promising, as CSP is also losing ground due to the rapid decline in PV costs.
Google is not the only one to repeatedly underestimate the impact of declining solar cell prices and our opinion on clean energy over the past few decades. Solar photovoltaic power costs have fallen by about 10 factors in the last decade, above the dramatic cost declines so far, a total drop of about a hundred factors since US President Jimmy Carter introduced solar panels at the White House. 1979an. (Ronald Reagan removed them in 1986, in his second term as president).
To put it bluntly, if gasoline had dropped in price in the same way from 1979 levels, it would now cost a penny. Gasoline, of course, is a commodity, as prices rise for a variety of technological, economic, and political reasons. The price of solar electricity is driven by all of these factors, but over the years, technology has clearly prevailed. (This year, the prices of solar photovoltaic modules have risen by about 18% due to a temporary crisis in the silicon supply chain).
In his last year’s ceremony World Energy Forecasts, The International Energy Agency has declared solar electricity to be “the cheapest source of electricity in history” for sunny places with low financing costs. Both of these titles are important. The sun is obvious — the sun will always be cheaper than in Phoenix, Arizona, New York — but the report concluded that the sun is now cheaper than coal and natural gas in many places.
The sun must be so cheap it makes sense to build new solar power and the shutters coal and gas plants still make money for the owners.
Funding is key because that’s true. Solar photovoltaics and other renewable energies, such as wind, have low or near-zero operating costs – upfront costs have always been a major hurdle, and funding has been a major reason. Partly thanks to various government policies, solar investment is much less risky in the last decade or so by releasing cheap money.
As a result, solar photovoltaic energy has expanded rapidly; it is currently the fastest growing source of electricity in the world, and will be in the times to come. It starts from a low-capacity installed base, however, which is far from coal, gas, hydroelectric, nuclear, as well as wind, which is cheaper for a long time. That’s where one of the biggest problems with solar photovoltaics is. For many it may be the cheapest form of electricity, but that doesn’t make the transition to clean energy nearly fast enough.
We need more technological advances. Why stop at the parity of the grid, is it like supplying electricity through fossil energy sources that are as cheap as building and exploiting solar photovoltaic electricity? Why isn’t it 10% cheaper? Why not try reducing costs by another factor of 10 in a decade? These drops are necessary because the goal of network parity is misleading; the real question is at what point will utilities abandon real coal mines and become solar, rather than avoid adding new coal capacity. The sun must be so cheap it makes sense to build new solar power and the shutters coal and gas plants still make money for the owners.
Everything that the policy requires is both to promote solar technology and to support R&D in new technologies. The complete package includes technology research, development, demonstration, dissemination and dissemination. Every step in this chain deserves the direct support of the government, considering that as the chain progresses it becomes more and more expensive.
How to get cheaper
To better optimize investments for even cheaper solar, it is important to know what factors have reduced the cost of renewable energy in recent decades.
MIT energy systems scientist Jessika Trancik and his team found that the three-decade decline in solar cell costs can be attributed to three factors: R&D directly to improve the efficiency of modules (the amount of sunlight is converted into electricity) and other basic technological advances. ; economies of scale attributed to the size of solar cell manufacturing plants and higher input volumes such as silicon; and improvements made by learning by doing.
All of this isn’t too surprising, but what’s not so obvious is that each person’s relative contribution changes a lot over time. From 1980 to 2000, R&D accounted for about 60% of cost reductions, economies of scale stood at 20%, and the remote third accounted for about 5%; other factors that are largely not attributed make up the balance. That makes sense; there were impressive advances in the efficiency of solar cells, but not a time of great manufacturing and expansion. Since then, the pendulum has shifted from R&D and key technological improvements to economies of scale manufacturing, which now accounts for more than 40% of cost reductions. It is noteworthy, however, that advances in research account for about 40% of the decline.
A lesson for future investments aimed at making the sun even cheaper: they should have direct support for all three, focusing on scale-level factors. Trancik’s findings only consider the solar PV module itself. This leaves the installation, network connection and other factors that make up the total cost of the system. These are areas that will improve as technicians and companies gain more experience. The results of subsidies to increase solar photovoltaic installations also appear to be mixed, such as tariffs, which offer long-term contracts to solar power producers and renewable portfolios or clean energy standards. renewable, show net results while driving overall expansion.
No free lunch
Despite the fall in the price of the sun, the transition to renewables will be costly. The biggest question, of course, is how expensive it is when climate change also comes at a cost. Cheap solar is more economically attractive to developers if the social and environmental costs of carbon emissions from fossil fuels are taken into account.
Much here depends on the social cost of carbon, the amount of economic damage that each metric ton of carbon dioxide emitted today causes to the economy, society and the environment, and consequently how many tons of CO2. what was issued should be cost. It is a number that says a lot about the real cost of coal and other fossil fuels, and is a great help for solar photovoltaic and other renewable energy.
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